


The Food of Love

by ladyknightley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: ALL THE FLUFF, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, food based fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 13:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15390165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightley/pseuds/ladyknightley
Summary: Bill cooks for Fleur for the first time. It doesn't go as anyone expects.





	The Food of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the ever-marvellous Diva Gonzo for the prompt!

The problem with always being the one who is in control, is that when you are suddenly _not_ the one who is in control, it is very challenging. Or so Fleur thinks. You see, in relationships, she’s always had the upper hand. It’s been her _thing_. And, yes, okay, maybe it was starting to get a little boring, always having the upper hand. Every relationship she’d had had been the same in that way, and that’s...well, a bit boring.

But then she’d met Bill Weasley, and... _well_. He is not boring. Which is great! She enjoys that. Very much. The problem is, she is not in control any more. He leaves her sometimes (often) (always) feeling terribly _English_. Flustered. Hot and bothered. In a right flap. Dithery. These are not words she likes. These are particularly not words she likes to associate with herself. She cannot normally be described using these words. Except when she’s around him.

The problem is, Bill is _suave_. She likes that word. She likes that it describes him. She likes him. (A lot. Too much. It’s only been three months, and she thinks she might never want it to end, ever. She’s never had that thought before. And it’s more than a little terrifying.) Anyway, the point is, Bill is suave. And whilst she might like that about him, she doesn’t like what it turns her into.

(He does. Rather too much, she sometimes thinks.)

So, when she turns up on his doorstep one cold spring evening, and sees him all...well...flustered, she can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Because it _is_ a relief to see that he, too, is human, and capable of getting things wrong, and being thrown, and just basically not being in control all the time. It’s nice to know she’s not the one going to be teased this evening, that instead she’ll be doing the teasing. It’s kind of funny, too, if she’s honest.

It all began the other week, when they’d been out for a dinner date. She’d been dismissive of the terrible mush that passes for food in the restaurants they’ve been frequenting and had made some comment about how the English diet is terrible, and no one in this silly country knows how to cook. In response, he’d offered to make her dinner. She, jokingly—well, at least semi-jokingly—had feigned disgust at the idea of eating yet more overdone meat and/or mushy peas. So he’d offered to cook her something French.

“ _You_ can cook French food?” Fleur had asked, not even trying to hide the surprise in her tone. He’d reminded her, dryly, that he’d lived all over the world for nearly ten years and had picked up a thing or two on his travels. _Then_ , he’d suggested that in disbelieving he might be able to actually feed himself decent food, she sounded like his mother. In response, she’d dug deep into her inner reserves of haughtiness and informed him that she looked forward to trying his attempts, if next Thursday suited him.

Now, she’s fighting back laughter as she walks into his flat (which smells awful; he later informs her it’s burnt blue cheese, but won’t say what he was attempting which caused the stench). _He’s_ the one who’s all flustered. Nothing is ready, the kitchen looks like a whirlwind’s ripped through it, his clothes are covered in suspicious looking stains, and even his ponytail looks more dishevelled than usual. “Never mind,” she coos. “You tried, and I appreciate the effort. It ees very... _sweet_ of you.” She pats him on the back, deliberately patronising, and revelling in every moment of having the upper hand.

For a second, it looks like he’s going to try to ride it out. To pretend like this is all part of the plan, or maybe, instead, try for some witty comeback to her smugly condescending soothing. But then he bites his lip and turns serious. And Fleur, who has been laughing along, frowns slightly.

“I just...you’d seemed really homesick,” he says. He gives a sort of half-shrug, looking slightly awkward. For all her feelings for him, she’s not sure if they’re yet at the stage when they can admit their vulnerabilities to each other. Her teasing look vanishes, and her eyes slide, almost of their own accord, past his face and she focuses instead on a spot just above his head on the kitchen wall.

Bill, though, carries on. “I wanted to make an effort for you,” he explains, still sounding uncertain. “I wanted to cook something that might remind you of home. I just...I just thought you might like that.” He shrugs again, like it’s no big deal—and it undoes her.

She hasn’t said anything about the homesickness. To him, or to anyone. It’s there, he’s right about that. It will always be there, she thinks, unless she returns to France for good, and lately she’s realised that that’s starting to seem increasingly unlikely. She tries not to dwell on it, tries not to think about her little sister, her grandparents’ farm, her Dad’s terrible jokes, the cats. All the little things that break her heart simply by not being there every day. The other evening, she’d been walking down Diagon Alley and caught a waft of her mother’s perfume on one of the terribly well-dressed ladies walking by, and she’d had to duck into a quiet bookshop to cry for a moment.

Of course, she has a reputation to maintain: she can’t actually tell anyone about it. She doesn’t yet feel comfortable enough with her new English friends to talk about it with them; her parents would worry about her; and her friends from home, who had been amazed that she, Triwizard champion, who could have had her pick of jobs in France, had moved to damp, grey England to work as a temp in the bank, wouldn’t _say_ ‘I told you so’, but they’d certainly think it. As for Bill...well, he’s got enough to worry about, with everything that’s going on, than the fact that the silliest things, like the fact that she cannot get good coffee for love nor money, make her heart ache in a way she cannot explain.

So she’d thought she’d been hiding all that from him. She thought she’d concealed everything; she hadn’t realised he’d seen past all the defences she puts up to her true self.

But it’s more than that. Bill had seen her homesickness and had not thought about how he could use her vulnerability. She learnt a long time ago not to be vulnerable around men. It has not ended well for her. Bill, though, has just thought about how he might best help her, how he could alleviate her homesickness. And he had decided to cook for her. He’d sourced a French cookbook, probably had to translate a recipe, had bought the ingredients, thought about the required preparation, and everything else.

And, yes, the meal was a total disaster. Yes, he has no clue about French cooking, and no, if he’d asked, she probably wouldn’t have gone for it.

But. She’s heard the expression ‘it’s the thought that counts’ before today, but she’s never really _understood_ it. Until now. And... _well_. There’s only one response to his kindness, really.

Unfortunately, in their mutual distraction, something catches fire.

And, as good as things are in _that_ department, that is not a metaphor. She’s half on the kitchen countertop, half on him, and _just_ as she reaches that magical moment where her brain cannot focus on anything but _more_ and _you_ and _now_ , there’s an enormous _whoompf_ sound, and, in the few seconds it takes them both to disengage, it looks like the whole stovetop is on fire.

She shrieks, he curses. They both flap around, panicked for half a second, before remembering that they have wands, and simultaneously pour water on the conflagration. For a moment it looks worse, and she remembers something about water and fat fires, remembers the blue cheese smell and feels truly alarmed, and then, just as suddenly, the fire dies. When it’s nothing more than a smoulder, she leaves him casting cooling charms and inspecting the damage, and opens the windows and backdoor to try to get the smell out. Fortunately, he lives on the ground floor, so she can take a moment, in the early spring night, to cool the flush of her cheeks which has only partially been caused by the flames. Surreptitiously, she smooths out her hair, rubs a finger around her lips to clear any smudged lipstick.

She brushes her hands over her skirt, smoothing that out too, and straightens her shoulders before walking back in. She has to look neat and proper, because for once—for once!—she gets to be the one in control. She’d thought she’d lost that upper hand, but it appears that it’s come back to her. Entering the kitchen, she takes in the despondent way he is poking the saucepan, and tries not to feel too smug.

Well, she doesn’t try _that_ hard.

“I think,” he says, lifting it up from the stovetop, “that this is a gonner.”

“Well,” she says, “I was not that ’ungry anyway.”

“I meant the saucepan,” he says, then sighs. “Auntie Muriel’ll kill me. She bought the set, when I moved out. Mind you, I guess it’s an excuse not to have her round. Not that I really needed an excuse, to be truthful. And I suspect she wouldn’t come anyway. Everyone knows what she thinks about those of us who don’t favour the Prewetts.”

Fleur blinks. She doesn’t know who this Auntie Muriel person is, and, if she’s honest, she really doesn’t care. All she knows is that Bill looks miserable. And she knows _exactly_ how to cheer him up.

She walks over to him—the kitchen is tiny, anyway, so that takes all of three seconds, and removes the pan from his arms, placing them around her waist instead whilst she interlocks her own hands around the back of his neck, running her fingers through his hair. “It does not matter,” she croons. “Per’aps, instead, we go to my flat. I ’ave ice cream, or per’aps I make you some toast, and _then_ we—”

He places a finger on her lips. “It’s fine,” he says.

“I do not mind,” she assures him. “I am sure that I have some tinned soup leftover. Or we could just skip dinner and go straight to—” But he won’t let her soothe him, shushing her again. He reaches over her shoulder, to the sideboard, and then hands her—

“A mug?” she asks. “What—”

“I didn’t exactly have much faith in my own abilities to cook something spectacular,” he says cheerfully. “In fact, I’d pretty much anticipated a disaster.”

“It does not matter,” she says again, trying to put the mug he has inexplicably given her down somewhere subtly. But he closes his hands over her own, so they’re both holding it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he says, a slight smile playing on his lips. “It’s a Portkey.” She frowns up at him, and, a beat later, he adds. “To Paris.”

She blinks.

“Leaving in...ooh, eight and a half minutes. We have reservations at _La Sorcière et Balai_.” It’s only his totally mangled pronunciation that convinces her he’s not lying. Only an Englishman would go to all that effort, then sound as though he was dying when trying to say the words.

Several questions cross her mind at once, and she has about three seconds to decide which is the most pressing before going with: “ _Why_?”

Bill looks at her, a half-smile playing across his lips. “Like I said, because you’ve clearly been homesick, and I wanted to do something for you to remind you of home. And, like I also said, because my cooking is shit. I had anticipated that we would need back up, and thought it’d be a bit of a let down if we went for chips with a side of mushy peas again, having got you all ready for something fancy. A friend of a friend works at Magical Transport, so I pulled in a favour and got us a last-minute Portkey. I saw you reading about that restaurant in that magazine last week, and I looked them up and made a reservation. I just thought...I just thought it would be a nice thing to do. So I did it.”

“It ees,” she says, smiling back at him, “a very nice thing to do. Thank you.”

“ _De rein_ ,” he replies. “What?” he adds, as she can’t help the look of surprise which flashes across her face. “I’ve been practising.”

She giggles. “I can tell.”

“Good,” he says, grinning. “My goal is to keep you on your toes. Am I managing?”

She wouldn’t dream of admitting it to anyone else. “Maaaaaaybe,” she says, grudging look fighting with the smile.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll keep trying.”

The smile wins.


End file.
